An official with sway over how federal dollars to help with homelessness are doled out on the Peninsula appears unwilling to reverse a decision to deny funding to the region's largest winter-time homeless shelter.

LINK of Hampton Roads, which operates that emergency shelter, learned in late March that it has been deemed ineligible to receive $65,000 next year from a grant to cover certain aspects of its operations. The reason: its leaders missed three of the Greater Virginia Peninsula Homelessness Consortium's monthly meetings.

LINK executive director Lynne Finding told the Daily Press last week that the amount is substantial enough to shut down the shelter entirely. And she has appealed for an exemption, also lobbying supporters of the shelter to join in the appeal.

On Monday consortium chairwoman Mary Holup responded and indicated she and others at the consortium have not had a change of heart.

"It's unfortunate that LINK did not follow the bylaws pertaining to continuum of care grantees," she said in a letter.

Holup indicated that making an exception for LINK could endanger the entire region's federal funding, though it's unclear how or whether federal housing officials would shrink a region's allotment might be shrunk on account of lax local bylaws.

In a follow-up phone conversation with the Daily Press and in a letter sent to LINK obtained by the paper, Holup rejected earlier assertions from Finding that the rules regarding meeting attendance have been applied inconsistently.

Since she assumed the chairmanship in 2012, Holup said, groups hoping to receive a portion of the federal and state dollars that flow through the consortium have had to attend 75 percent of its meetings.

Though Holup and Finding continued to disagree Monday as to whether the requirement was being applied equally to all consortium members, there's no question LINK was under the threshold.

A third absence put LINK on the wrong side of the requirement.

It came on Jan. 21, as a snowstorm approached Hampton Roads. Officials running the LINK shelter, which rotates among 20 Newport News churches and is supported by a small army of volunteers, decided they had to ferry shelter residents from one church to another ahead of schedule.

Finding has asked for some leniency considering what her organization was up against that day.

She has also asked Holup and the consortium for special consideration because of its mission. If the shelter closes, Finding says, vulnerable people will be out on the street.

Holup said consortium members "did know the consequences" of their decision when they deemed LINK ineligible.

She said the group is seeking to work with LINK officials moving forward to make sure no homeless residents are pushed through the cracks as a result.

But she also said she's skeptical that losing $65,000 will spell the end of the shelter.

"Are they really going to shut down?" she asked, before noting that other winter-time shelters in Hampton and South Hampton Roads don't tap into regional funds distributed in their regions.

Even as the consortium's position on the matter seemed to harden, LINK allies, particularly in Newport News' religious community, have begun to voice their concern with the funding decision.

"I was saddened and disappointed to hear that LINK had been declined essential funding for its work with the homeless," Rev. Bill Lamont of Hidenwood Presbyterian Church wrote in an email to a reporter.

Lamont said he's planning a letter-writing campaign within his congregation.

Finding said Monday that she was upset that the consortium's leaders don't appear willing to budge in the spending dispute.

"I'm ashamed to be a part of this group who do not care about the high number of homeless men, women and children who we've been serving," she said. "I don't know what's going to happen to them."